Load the Game

According to a new survey, Call of Duty drives sales of the PS5, PS4, and Xbox One

• Jacob Chambers
• February 10th, 2023

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard is being contested due to Call of Duty’s widespread popularity on PlayStation gaming consoles. According to research by the UK’s Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA), a sizable portion of customers purchase a PlayStation primarily for Call of Duty.

The CMA discovered through surveys (as reported by Christopher Dring) that 88% of users purchase PlayStation because of the availability of one or more games. And a staggering 73% of the 88% said Call of Duty was the game in question.

It’s a fascinating statistic given that Call of Duty was undoubtedly released across multiple platforms. But Sony has long had a marketing agreement with the company, which also guarantees exclusive content for the platform. It’s obvious that Call of Duty is now closely linked to PlayStation, at least in the minds of the majority of customers.

In order to provide some additional context, the survey also discovered that 69% of gamers chose the PlayStation because of exclusive games (such as God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West), while 45% did so specifically because of Grand Theft Auto V. It can be all too easy to lose sight of how dominant Call of Duty is in the more casual market on enthusiast websites like Push Square.

Of course, the CMA is one of the organizations currently opposing Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. It recently warned that the acquisition might give the company an unfair advantage in the gaming industry, harming players.